Board of Education likes idea of smaller classes, cannot pay for them
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on February 8, 2017 10:07 AM
The Wayne County Board of Education approved a long list of policy updates and changes at its meeting Monday evening, and also recognized students and staff for various achievements.
The action item on the agenda was for the board to approve a resolution on the bill regulating class sizes in grades K-3 currently being discussed in the N.C. General Assembly.
The bill, known as House Bill 13, would require classes in those grades to adhere to predetermined sizes based on funding schools are allotted.
Those smaller class sizes would likely be beneficial to students, but could force many districts to cut funding for art, music and physical education programs to hire new teachers and build new space.
Michael Dunsmore, WCPS superintendent, said in January that the bill has the potential to be greatly beneficial to students. However, he said, it would require the district to hire 64 new teachers and find space for the new classes by the 2017-2018 school year -- a nearly impossible task.
The board approved the resolution, which voices opposition to the bill and calls on the General Assembly to afford school districts the class size and funding flexibility to avoid the "severe negative impacts" that the bill would have.
"I commend the General Assembly on working on lowering class size, because we do know through research that helps students learn," Dunsmore said. "But we need the ability to be able to roll that out, in particular with our local government and our commissioners here in Wayne County to make sure we have the funding provided to make that a reality."
The policies before the board, of which there were nearly 40, were passed fairly quickly. The board deliberated many of them at their Jan. 31 work session, so little discussion was left to be had by the time the meeting began.
Among the decisions was the Bring Your Own Device policy, a rule which allows students to bring their own electronic devices such as smartphones or tablets for use in classroom instruction.
District 4 representative Jennifer Strickland asked David Lewis, WCPS assistant superintendent for accountability/information and technology, to clarify some parts of the program.
She said that some were concerned that their children would be required to bring devices to school.
"As we undergo our technology infrastructure upgrades that we're doing primarily this year in middle and high schools and to follow next year elementary schools, it will allow us the opportunity to permit students to bring in their own devices if they would like to, and hook to our network to use Internet-based resources" he said. "One thing we heard during our strategic planning sessions was that students wanted to be able to use their mobile devices, tablets and what not, but at this point the parents are incurring the data charges."
The policy would act as a way to fill the gaps where the district could not provide school-owned devices. Lewis said in January that WCPS will likely never be able to provide every single student with a school-owned device, which is where the 'bring-your-own' policy can come in for those who have them.
If an assignment requires internet connectivity to complete, Lewis said, schools are required to provide students with a way to complete the assignment whether the student has a device or not.
Another community concern Mrs. Strickland noted was how schools will make sure personal devices are being used only for educational purposes.
Lewis said that the policy only covers classroom instruction, which would mean that a student would only be allowed to use their device during class time and for its intended use.
The decision on whether or not to allow those devices is in the hands of principals as well as individual teachers, who can decide on a school and classroom level if the policy is right for them.
School administrators will also have the ability to monitor the content being accessed through their system, Lewis said.
"We have updated our data center with something called a unified threat management system, UTM. This is going to allow us to very, keep a very close eye on the traffic that takes place on our network."
If inappropriate traffic is discovered, the device it was accessed from can be blocked from network access, at which point the device's owner will have to come ask to have access back.
Outside of policy decisions, the board was also celebrated by the N.C. Principals and Assistant Principals Association, in a belated observance of School Board Appreciation Week. Dozens of school administrators from around Wayne County walked up to the board's desk to thank members for their work, and each board member received a small gift bag.